A20
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2012
FROM THE COVER | THE KANSAS CITY STAR.
WWW.KANSASCITY.COM
HUNGER: Facebook post prompts food donations at Guadalupe school FROM A1
and staff knew that many of their students’ families struggle and that some of them are so poor that many times they go days without dinner. About a third of the school’s 70 students, in kindergarten through fifth grade, come from homes where “sometimes there’s food and sometimes there’s not,” said Principal Joe Schramp. “The breakfast and lunch they get at school are often the only meals many get each day.” Although Harvesters provides 17,000 BackSnack packs each Friday to students in a 26-county area, the program serves only public schools; it doesn’t go to schools that charge tuition, even when many students’ enrollment fees are paid by scholarships from other nonprofit agencies, as is the case at Guadalupe. Sanchez-Chastain grew up in Kansas City’s Southwest Boulevard area. Her children went to Guadalupe, and she’s been the secretary there for about two decades. Though she and others knew many of the families’ stories, they didn’t realize just how bad things were for some of them. What they discovered was that in the week before Thanksgiving, 25 families didn’t have enough food to get them through the long break from school. At a school board meeting the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Schramp told a friend the story of the little girl smuggling fruit from the cafeteria because she was hungry. The friend, Jeremy Lillig, is the director of Bright Futures, which raises scholarship money for needy children to attend urban-core Catholic schools in Kansas City, including Guadalupe. He pulled out his cell phone and posted the tale on his Facebook page. He wasn’t sure if anyone would respond.
HOW TO HELP For the third year, The Star is partnering with Harvesters to be host of a virtual food drive. All money raised will go to Harvesters’ BackSnack program for kids. Go to feedingkckids. harvesters.org to make a donation. If you’d like, you can designate your donation in the honor or memory of a family member or friend. The Star will publish the dedications on Christmas Day. Dedications need to be in by 5 p.m. today to appear in the Christmas paper.
KEITH MYERS | THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Chasing away winter’s cold Across the metro area, stories of families going without — food, electricity, gas, water — play out every day, in every county. That’s why Kelli, a mother of two featured in The Star’s hunger series this month, couldn’t believe it when people read about her family and were touched. She and her kids live in a rented three-bedroom home on the East Side. Their gas had been turned off for months, and with winter coming, all she could do was plan to get more blankets from a food pantry to cover the windows. How would she keep her children warm when the weather turned frigid? And when it comes to food, she’s never sure if they’ll have enough, especially if she can’t get to a pantry. She told her story to show what some families go through, to share how much her family is helped by the weekend BackSnacks from Harvesters and the guidance and support of Operation Breakthrough’s Sister Berta Sailer. Never did Kelli think people would respond. But this is Kansas City, Sailer said.
A Facebook message began a procession of donors with food for children at Our Lady of Guadalupe School on the West Side. Principal Joe Schramp looked over some of the food, which is being used to start a pantry.
“People do want to help,” she said. “And they did.” One woman wrote: “I would love to stock their pantry or fridge or just donate cash.” Another reader said: “I have this $50 bill burning a hole in my pocket. How can I get some cash to Kelli’s family?” Others asked if she could use help with her gas bill. How about gift cards for food? Or Christmas presents for her son and daughter? “To me, this is my daily life, how we live,” Kelli said recently. “But I guess it shocked them. … When you tell someone you’re working, they think you’re fine.” Sailer said she has many working families who are trying to pay all the bills and put food on the table. Too often they run short. Sailer spoke with people who dropped off money to help pay Kelli’s gas bill. Some talked of the food insecurity described in other stories. “One woman told me she just didn’t know that kids were going hungry,” Sailer said. An-
other woman offered to help moms at Operation Breakthrough prepare to take their GED. Within a week or so after Kelli’s story ran in the newspaper, people had donated enough to pay her $512.89 gas bill. The utility turned Kelli’s gas back on Thursday, but then she discovered the furnace didn’t work. Now she hopes her landlord will fix the furnace by Christmas so the family will have heat. “We’ll be together and warm,” said Kelli, adding how grateful, and surprised, she was for the help from strangers. “I was in shock, really. I thought my situation was helpless. … This will brighten our Christmas.”
“I’ve always wanted to teach them it’s important to give back,” Mallory said. Last Christmas, she and her teenage boys decided that maybe they could do something bigger with the money, some-
thing that would last longer than the Christmas season. Mallory and her boys got to thinking. Maybe they could create an organization, a nonprofit corporation, that would raise money they could give to Harvesters. They could call it justONE, Mallory suggested, going off the idea that just one person can change things. “My mom is a big thinker,” said her son, Sam Mallory, 16. “She thinks of big ideas.” The three brothers, Sam, Joe and Tucker, took it from there. Each called up a couple of buddies and told them the idea. Before long, nine teenage boys from the Blue Valley district were researching the biggest issues facing families and young people. Whatever they raised through soccer tournaments would go to a specific charity. The causes that topped their list? A healthy water supply. Homelessness. Hunger. In their research, the teens discovered that thousands of area children often don’t have enough food at home. That’s even the case for parts of Johnson County, where the teens live. Childhood hunger ended up winning out. “What we realized is we live in a very privileged area where we don’t see hungry kids,” said Tyler Kunkel, 16. He andSam Mallory are co-presidents of justONE. “Our friends aren’t hungry, we’re not hungry, but 1 in 5 kids in our region is.” The teens’ first soccer tour-
A flash food drive And at Guadalupe? When Lillig put his post on Facebook, he couldn’t accept the idea that at least 25 families were heading into a five-day Thanksgiving weekend without enough food. But would anyone else care enough to lend a hand? Within seconds, he had his answer. His Facebook page exploded. “It breaks my heart,” one friend posted. “If they (students) aren’t eating, that means their families aren’t either. Let me know how we can help.” Within minutes, the Facebook friends had hatched a plan to collect a few bags of food to drop off the next day. Lillig’s friends posted on their Facebook pages. Their friends posted it on their pages. Before Lillig knew it, he and his friends — a virtual community — had launched a flash food drive. “About 1 a.m. that night one of my colleagues, Allison Hiatt, called and woke me from a dead sleep to tell me people were still ringing her doorbell to leave food for the children on her porch,” Lillig said. School secretary SanchezChastain, who was supposed to be off that Wednesday before Thanksgiving but went in just SEE DONORS | A21
Soccer for a cause When the holidays come around, Lori Mallory of Overland Park likes to give her triplet sons money to help other people. They can pick a family to help or give money to a nonprofit. Last year she called it The Big Give.
Videos to DVD Somewhere in the dark, your memories are Copy fading away... One, Get a y u B Find your memories and bring them to us, mail them or we can pick them up. plicate ee DVD Du 0, Get a Fr No sorting required. nsfer for $1 tra e on y Bu You watch and have fun!
FREE
Try the
WORLDS BEST CUSTOM MADE ORTHOTICS
with our *Unconditional Comfort Guarantee
IDEAL FOR
placed rs already d on orde se, not vali Deatils. Store for of piurcha Apply. See Ad! At time With This trictions May Some Res
VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV, & 8mm Camcorder Tapes
ACT NOW! LIMITED TIME OFFER EXPIRES 09-13-12 FINAL DAYS TO SAVE!
Preserve Your Memories Today! You may also want to store your photos or videos in the cloud for $20 annually!
HURRY! THREE WEEKS ONLY! EXPIRES 1/12/13
S SOMETHING DIFFERENT
www.SomethingDifferent.com/Specials OLATHE: 109 S MUR-LEN (SANTA FE & MUR-LEN BY PRICE CHOPPER) PRAIRIE VILLAGE: 7510 STATE LINE RD, SUITE B (SW CORNER 75th & STATE LINE)
764-9500
(913)
nament is scheduled for Jan. 2. This is where they’ll work the kinks out and learn what running a tournament will entail. They don’t think they’ll make a lot on this first one, but 100 percent of the profits will go to Harvesters. The teens (eight of them are active in the organization) have applied the paperwork to make justONE a 501(c) 3 tax-exempt organization. As their tournaments get bigger, they plan to give 55 percent of what they make to Harvesters and soon will meet with the food bank to discuss how the money can help young people. They’ll put most of the rest back toward growing justONE. “We’re kind of giving back to people our age,” Sam Mallory said. Tyler said they couldn’t turn their backs on hunger. “We live in such a great area, things like this shouldn’t go on,” he said. “Kids shouldn’t be going hungry.”
SHOE REPAIR NOW DONE ON PREMISES
Please call for appointment 888-994-4494 for information & details ails
11715 Roe Avenue, Leawood, KS 66211 (On the East side of Roe Ave.)
facebook.com/comfortplusshoes